WeeklySA_AdminKNOWLEDGE: South African women producing groundbreaking research, but greater access to funding, industry networks and commercialisation support needed to turn their discoveries into technologies that improve lives…
By Prudence Makhura
Every Women’s Month, we rightly celebrate the growing contribution of women to science and research. But recognition and representation is only part of the story.
If South Africa wants to build a strong and sustainable innovation economy, we also need to ask what happens after women enter laboratories, lead research groups and produce new knowledge.
Are their discoveries protected? Are they connected to industry? Can they access commercialisation support, funding and markets? Do they have opportunities to turn intellectual property into products, services and enterprises?
These are important questions because excellent research does not automatically translate into innovation.
If we focus only on women’s participation in science and neglect
their participation in innovation, we risk solving only half the problem…
Between a scientific discovery and a product that improves lives lies a complicated and often difficult journey involving intellectual property, funding, market validation, regulation, technology development, industry engagement and commercial networks.
In research and innovation management, this is where we often see promising ideas stall.
The researcher may have produced excellent science. The technology may work. The potential social or economic value may be clear. But without the right support system, that work can remain confined to a publication, a laboratory or a patent that is never taken further.
South Africa cannot afford that.
Our research system operates in a country facing substantial challenges, including unemployment, food insecurity, disease, climate pressures and slow economic growth. At the same time, we need to strengthen our capacity to develop new technologies, businesses and industries.
That makes the effective use of our research talent a national imperative.
Women researchers are already contributing significantly to this effort. The next challenge is to ensure that they are able to participate fully not only in knowledge creation, but in the innovation economy that can emerge from it.
This requires us to think more broadly about what research success looks like.
Academic publications and citations remain essential measures of scholarly excellence, but they cannot be the only measures of impact.
A discovery can also create value when it becomes a licensed technology, informs a new product, attracts an industry partner, establishes a spin-off company or provides a practical solution to a social problem. We have compelling examples of what this can look like.
At the University of Pretoria, Professor Namrita Lall’s research into indigenous medicinal plants has generated more than 40 patents and over 30 prototypes and commercialised products. Her work has also contributed to spin-off pharmaceutical and skincare companies and has demonstrated how scientific research can create economic opportunities while drawing value from indigenous knowledge systems.
Professor Lise Korsten’s research in food safety, plant health and reducing food losses has similarly moved beyond academic publication into practical application and industry partnership. This includes technology based on Trichoderma soil fungi that was licensed to BASF.
These examples matter not because they are exceptional women who somehow overcame the system, but because they illustrate what becomes possible when excellent science is connected to mechanisms that can move it towards application.
That connection does not happen by accident.
Researchers need access to expertise that can help them identify and protect intellectual property, evaluate whether a technology has commercial potential, understand competing technologies and markets, find appropriate funding and connect with industry partners.
Technology transfer offices and research and innovation management professionals, therefore have a role that extends far beyond filing patents.
A patent is not an innovation simply because it exists.
If nobody develops it, licenses it, invests in it or adopts it, its potential impact may never be realised.
That is why commercialisation support needs to include market validation, technology landscaping, competitor analysis, industry engagement and the development of partnerships capable of carrying an idea beyond the research environment. These are among the functions that research and innovation support structures provide to researchers seeking to move their work into real-world application.
The gender dimension of this deserves greater attention.
Much of the conversation about women in science has understandably focused on encouraging girls into STEM subjects, improving the representation of women in research and addressing barriers to career progression.
Those remain important priorities.
However, we should also be asking what happens further along the research and innovation pipeline.
Who gets introduced to commercial partners? Who participates in entrepreneurial networks? Whose technologies attract investment? Who receives the support needed to build a spin-off company? Who is encouraged to think of their research as something that could become intellectual property, a licence, a product or a new venture?
If we focus only on participation in science and neglect participation in innovation, we risk solving only half the problem.
The objective should not be to push every researcher towards commercialisation. Much valuable research will never become a product, nor should it.
But where research does have the potential for wider application, researchers should have a fair opportunity to pursue that path.
This is particularly important for South Africa because innovation is ultimately about much more than commercial return.
A successful innovation ecosystem can strengthen industries, create enterprises, support jobs, improve public services and turn locally generated knowledge into solutions designed for local and global challenges.
Women therefore need to be seen not simply as beneficiaries of transformation in science, but as producers of intellectual property, technology, enterprises and economic value.
As we mark Women’s Month, that may be the more useful measure of progress.
We should certainly ask how many women are entering science and how many are progressing into senior research positions.
But we should also ask how many are leading innovation programmes, developing technologies, securing patents, establishing enterprises, licensing intellectual property and forming the partnerships that enable research to reach society.
South Africa has invested substantially in building its scientific capability. We cannot afford to leave valuable knowledge stranded between discovery and application, particularly when that knowledge could help address some of our most urgent challenges.
Women are already producing science.
Our responsibility now is to ensure that the research and innovation system gives their ideas every opportunity to travel further.
Prudence Makhura is a Director of the Research, Innovation and Postgraduate Education at the University of Pretoria
Comment
Whither SAFA as Jordaan clings to power?
The leadership crisis engulfing the South African Football Association is no longer merely an internal football matter. It has become a test of how seriously one of the country’s most prominent sporting bodies regards accountability, ethical leadership and its own reputation.
SAFA president Danny Jordaan faces fraud, theft and conspiracy charges arising from the alleged misuse of the association’s funds. He and his co-accused are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and nothing should be allowed to compromise that fundamental legal principle.
But criminal guilt and leadership accountability are not the same thing.
A responsible leader does not always have to wait for a court to pronounce guilt before recognising that his continued presence may damage the institution he leads. Temporarily stepping aside would not amount to an admission. It would protect SAFA, allow the court process to unfold without an institutional cloud and demonstrate that the association is bigger than any individual. Instead, Jordaan remains firmly in control — and has now been approved to seek a fourth term as president.
That decision is perplexing.
SAFA’s Governance Committee may argue that it assessed his nomination strictly against the association’s statutes and found no legal impediment to his candidacy. But governance cannot be reduced to ticking eligibility boxes. It must also consider credibility, public confidence and the ethical standard expected of someone entrusted with overseeing football and its finances.
The allegations against Jordaan concern the very institution he continues to lead. That creates an unavoidable reputational conflict, irrespective of whether he is ultimately acquitted.
The decision to retain him has become even more troubling amid complaints from some quarters within SAFA and a succession of controversies involving the association. These include the delayed VAR project, government’s demand for the return of R13 million, the bruising dispute over Pitso Mosimane’s remuneration and the failure to reconcile expenditure from R700,000 allocated to the former Bafana Bafana team manager. Considered individually, SAFA may have an explanation for each controversy. Taken together, however, they depict an organisation beset by weak controls, damaged relationships and a worrying absence of decisive leadership.
The association’s voting delegates must therefore ask themselves what message Jordaan’s re-election would send. Would it represent stability — or an institutional refusal to confront its deepening credibility crisis?
SAFA belongs neither to Jordaan nor to those who control its electoral machinery. It belongs to South African football.
The mystery is not only why Jordaan has declined to step aside. It is why SAFA’s governing structures have not required him to do so.
Whither SAFA? Its leadership can no longer avoid answering
